deviousways

A couple of months ago, a former national level cricketer's father went missing in Mysore's Devaraja Market. The local police sprang into action and the gentleman was found in a couple of hours. In that time, though he had wandered some 5 km from the spot he was last seen (the market). News reports quoted the police as saying the elderly gentleman suffered from “age-related forgetfulness”. Now, I don't know if the cricketer's dad has some form of dementia. If he does, I do hope he is getting treatment (medicines can slow the process of brain degeneration but not halt or reverse it). I also hope that his fasmart technology, privacy, Facebook, mily is alert always whenever they go anywhere. Because the elderly gentleman, if he has dementia, can easily go missing again. Such wandering is a behaviour associated with dementia. According to the Alzheimer's Association of the US (www.alz.org), six in 10 people with dementia will wander. More frighteningly, res...

When I call to wish my father on his birthday, I usually say: “Happy birthday, Acha” ( acha or achan means 'father' in Malayalam). And always, my father replies: “Thank you, same to you”. My father is nearly 84. He was once a lawyer.  Now, birthdays don't matter to him. Nor do anniversaries, festivals, or any oc c asion, really. Today, he is a shell of the person he once was, physically and mentally. M y father, you see, has dementia.  Dementia ('de' meaning “without” and 'mentia' meaning “mind”) is actually a misleading term. It does not mean the sufferer is insane or demented. Rather, it is the term for a group of signs and symptoms a ssociated with a progressive loss of brain function--the sufferer's judgement, memory, behaviour, language and daily living skills (washing, cleaning oneself, brushing teeth etc.,) slowly deteriorate. Causes Dementia is a curious disease, people above 65 are more at risk. But while it is age-related, it ...

An old man accosted me yesterday morning. Accosted is too strong a word, but I am not sure how else to put it. He saw me just as I walked out of our apartment building, and started talking. Something about telegrams and mental illness and NIMHANs and medicines.... All the time, I was thinking, "Oh hell, why me, why me! Why can't he go away and bother someone else"? I was going to pick up little man and I had just 10 minutes to go. But he just wouldn't walk away and kept rambling on. Was he mentally ill? I am not sure, he certainly appeared lucid enough. He didn't seem disoriented or lost, as a person with dementia would seem to be. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Naveen, our building's security guard (who lives here with his family), watching. I glanced uncertainly at him, hoping he would come shoo the man away. He didn't. And yet, I didn't, couldn't, walk on, pretending this old man didn't exist. Instead I wondered why was he doin...

He is staring at me. I can sense it. I look up but his eyes are vacant. There is no life, no light. He is just a hollow shell of a man.  My father was not always like this. As a little girl, I trembled if he glanced my way. What if it was me, I'd worry, what if I was the chosen one, and what if it was not... my mother? But she usually was. Nothing she did was ever good enough. Either the tea was lukewarm or too hot. Or too sweet. Undrinkable, either way. If the rotis were warm, the bhaji was salty or spicy or something. Always something. Anything. "What is this s*%*t you've made today. How can anyone drink/eat such filth?", he'd shout. Then he'd remove his belt. Take off his shirt too. All the better to teach us a lesson.  Why did my mother, a school teacher, stay with him? I do not know. She had a job, she was Teacher Madam for all the children in the neighbourhood. But the other women, they knew. I am sure their husbands did too. They must have see...